Wichita eagle., 1887-10-19
KENYON'S VERSION.

] us; but had come west years before wheI
, wasn't much more than boy, to get rit
of the lung fevers / used to have ever,
spring sure, and maybe the fall between
thrown in. l had nothing but my two
hands to start with; but as soon as pt
made beginning-a small one, of course
| Il went back for Molly.
And then, as said, for five years We
had it rough.
| In the first place, we were burned out
in the town and never saved thing but
| the clothes we stood in and my team
| Then we started again out on the edge OF
| everything, where land was cheap, and ii
looked as if hard work might count fol
something. That time the Indians ran Us
of. Never saw an Indian? Well, sir.
| you never want to. / don't want to be
| hard on anything the Lord saw fit to
| make. suppose he knows what the; are
made for-or what he meant them for-I
know there's a good deal Of talk lately
about their wrongs. They've had 'em,
sure enough; may be don't see things
all round as / ought to. They say all
general rules bear hard on particular
cases. I'm one of the particular cases,
perhaps Anyhow, they killed one of the
children there-the girl, 5 years old; shot
her right in full sight of the cabin, and
Molly hasn't got over ID till this day.
1 picked up few head of cattle cheap
that fall, and for year We lived in a
wagon, camping and driving our cattle
across the ranges. You don't know what
that life means for woman, take it
month in and month out. Cooking over
a camp fire, and not much of anything to
cook, anyhow; clothes wet half the time;
never warm in winter nor cool in sum-
mer, and never clean. That year the
boy died-snakebit. We were so far from
settlement tina: we couldn't get doctor,
and we buried him ourselves.
We got into cabin in the fall. Four
of US, each one poorer than the others,
took section Of government land. We
had our teams and our health, and we
were down to bed rock; not much of any
thing to lose and everything to gain. A
man will work under such circumstances,
you'll find. We built in the middle of the
adjoining corners of our quarters, and so
had little settlement Of our own. We
did it for the sake of the women for it
made an almighty sight of travel for us
to get over in the course of the day
They were all New England women, slen-
der and spare, but solid grit clear through.
Plymouth Rock is pretty good stock
Never whimper nor complaint out of
one of them, though there wasn't sec
ond frock in the crowd; and if there was
always corn bread and coffee enough for
two in any of the ShantieS it wasn't in
ours. After awhile, though, we had game
enough-quail and prairie chickens. Prai-
rie chickens! l wouldn't be hired to touch
one now. l remember one day along to-
ward spring when Molly struck. We had
had quail and prairie chicken, prairie
chicken and quail. three times day ever
since | could remember, it seemed to me.
She put her fork down and pushed her
plate away and just quoted out of the
Bible: ''Not one day, nor two days, nor
five days, neither ten days nor twenty
days, but even until it come out at your
nostrils and be loathsome unto you" Molly
knew the Bible.
1t really began to look as if we had
touched bottom. That next spring we
got our crops in-corn laid by, rain and
sunshine and hot weather all just right;
and now and then we would hear a laugh
from the houses.
But the day the grasshoppers came
there was mighty little laughing done.
Clayton came III where l was taking my
noon smoke and kind of dropped down ir
a chair by the door, as if he couldn't get
any farther
''Mountaineersr' he said,. with kind
of gasp.
"Whats'' I said, not knowing but it
was another kind of Indian.
'Grasshoppers!'' 1t seems he had been
there before.
l ran out, and sure enough there they
were, coming up against the sun like a
low kind of cloud. And in a minute or
two it was like being out in live hail
storm. We tried to fight them with fire
and hot water, but we gave it up in an
hour. All day we sat and listened to that
horrible cracking and craunching, and
when they got through it looked as If
fire had gone over us. Not green thing
left, and the corn stalks gnawed down to
stuGps.
We held a council of war The end Of
it was that we drove our stock into the
town the next day, thirty miles, and sold
it. It didn't make us rich but at least
we got the price of the hides. Then three
of us were to work in the coal shippings,
and jim Clayton went back TO stay with
the women. He had smashed his shoul-
der that summer and was of no mortal
use with shovel and pick. We were to
keep them in supplies, and it looked as II,
after all, things might have been worse.
And they got worse before great while.
The coal company petered out just as the
real cold weather set in. We took back q
big load of coal; it was the only pay we
ever got for our last fortnight's work, and
called another council.
Along in November late--about the time
when they were keeping Thanksgiving on
the side where they know what Thanks
giving means-we started on buffalo
hunt. There was enough 10 eat, such as
it was, for month in the cabins, and fuel
enough TO keep them warm; and by that
time we thought work might begin again.
Anyway, we'd have our meat for the rest
of the winter.
Well, it's no use 10 go over that. 1t
wasn't q pleasant trip. We weren't out
for the fun of killing. We camped out at
night, and rode and shot and dressed game
by day. and dill not starve nor quite freeze |
to death: and we got back again on to the |
plains along in December.
l wanted to push through and get home, |
but the horses We're played out; and ali
the next day, after we struck the level, |
we just crawled along. We had not heard |
a word since we started, and | was pretty |
anxious-Molly was not well when l left |
her; but there was no choice about it,
had to go; the women were with her, and |
there was doctor in the town. and Clay |
ton had good horse, and we had to do |
about that az we had done about every |
fhiy1r elsa-+alo orr cbauces